Essential Elements of a Great Story

Some stories are timeless and transcend genre boundaries. These stories reach across barriers of time and age. All of the greatest stories have certain things in common, and in the post The Five Essential Elements of a Great Story, Archway Publishing looks at some of these key craft components.

Five Essential Elements

Protagonist – There’s a reason the Harry Potter series bears his name.

Antagonist – Do you remember the name of the man who threw the harpoon, or the name Moby-Dick?

An Inciting Action – World War Z was a phenomenon, largely because reader new right from the first page that something incredible had happened.

Conflict – Would Sherlock Holmes have worked as well without the foil of Moriarty?

Resolution – Readers invest in the stories they read; you have to reward them for that investment.

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One thought on “Essential Elements of a Great Story”

Some writers make the mistake of thinking that the antagonist should be a person. That there should be an evil villain in the story. But the antagonist can be any concept that challenges the protagonist.